Quoting: 14

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: Mountain ManNow we just need to convince everyone using a Steam Deck to ditch Windows and install Linux on their desktops because they're already using Linux.

Ha, just pick a 'proper' Linux distribution. PopOS was one for me... until I attempted to update some old install on a laptop I sold to some friends for cheap. PopOS ate itself in a spectacular way! Back to Debian for you! On that note; seems every new Debian release there are less and less things I have to tweak post-install for it to work the way I want it to. And at this point it's mostly just installing ublock on Firefox and changing it's default search engine away from Google.

Sounds like you should start backing up your Firefox profile. ;)

Ha, anytime I've tried only copying over certain things, it causes issues...

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Quoting: ShabbyX

Quoting: slaapliedjeThese days, I think I'll start doing my writing with Atari Works. :P

Joke aside, look into LaTeX! Such a relief not getting bogged down with formatting vs WYSIWIG.

Ha, I tried to find a client for macOS for LaTeX... could I find a free one? no, why would that exist on a Mac? I truly hate that platform for how everyone feels they should charge for software. Reminds me of how the Amiga was back in the day. Maybe I'm just far too spoiled with all the open source stuff!

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Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: tuubiAmiga users didn't need MS Write. We had the clearly superior WordPerfect. :P

Typed a bunch of my school essays on my Amiga 500 and printed them out with a very noisy Star LC-10 dot matrix printer.

WordPerfect is still around under Corel's management. It had its latest release only three years ago.

Yeah I know. There were even native Linux versions at some point. Never used or saw them myself, but I know they existed.

I had a boxed copy, back in the day, of Corel Linux. Even came with a little rubber penguin. Sadly, they only supported it for about a year and a half; then Xandros bought it. Then they proceeded to die off...

But Corel had been, for the longest time, the largest attempt at actually making a Desktop / user friendly Linux, specifically marketed toward getting people off of Windows... actually backed by a well known company that did other stuff.

Closest we actually have to that now would be the Steam Deck in desktop mode... everyone else are companies where Linux is their core business. And even then, they don't really push it as a Desktop.

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Quoting: JarmerThe defining question: will it have a suspend mode similar to the deck or not? None of these handhelds are worth a penny if not. I don't know the Ally has added it post release but it didn't ship with this feature, right?

The ability to just click the power button, set the deck back on the dock at night, and then when ready to play again, pushing the button and basically being right back into the game again may actually get me to complete some games!

The OLED Steam Deck is seriously awesome. I'd play on the original one a bit here and there, but play far more on the OLED one! It's just so nice in the hands!

I actually refuse to get the Ally or Legion Go simply based on not wanting anymore copies of Windows in my house... if they sold a SteamOS version, I'd likely pick up a Legion Go at some point...

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Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: slaapliedjeMS Write was also available for the Atari ST (I think that's what it was called before they changed it to Word). I don't think it was ever available for the Amiga though.

Amiga users didn't need MS Write. We had the clearly superior WordPerfect. :P

Typed a bunch of my school essays on my Amiga 500 and printed them out with a very noisy Star LC-10 dot matrix printer.

Ha, so true. I've been looking into just setting up an old PC with Corel Linux and WP8 for Linux (last version that was native). I sort of got it working on a modern Debian, but the nostalgia of old KDE and everything sounds tempting!

Out of all the platforms out there, the Amiga seems to be the only one that never had an Office suite made by (or at least bought by) the owner. Like there are a couple of them, but they were all made by third party companies. Atari had Works, Mac bought Claris, and even the Apple IIGS has a version of that. It's just one more checkbox in the 'Commodore didn't properly support the Amiga'.

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: slaapliedjeConspiracy Mode; Have you ever wondered if one of the main reasons Office and it's ilk are moving to cloud based systems is due to Linux finally getting to the point where it can run stand alone Office? I'm pretty sure the latest version runs fine there now... (I still don't know why macOS got a port of Office, and Linux never did. You'd think MS would want Office on all the platforms they could to make more money... but then again, they figure they can force people to also buy Windows... greedy Mofos).

Funny you should mention that. Microsoft Word has had an official version for Macintosh since initial release in 1983. It predates even Windows; it was MS-DOS back then. Microsoft Excel was released for Macintosh two years before a Windows version appeared. So you could say one of the reasons is Linux didn't actually exist back then.

This was a few years after Microsoft abandoned their UNIX OS, XENIX.

I've gotten Microsoft Office to work under CrossOver but Word was the only one that worked decently. Powerpoint was very crash-happy. Excel was fine, but I didn't use it much. I wonder if the Affinity Suite will be usable and stable in Wine before Microsoft Office is...

MS Write was also available for the Atari ST (I think that's what it was called before they changed it to Word). I don't think it was ever available for the Amiga though.

Ha, had to look that up, as the Machintosh wasn't available in 1983.. Word was available on Xenix first. Classic Mac got it in 1985, Atari ST got it in 1988, OS/2 in 1989 and Windows (also 1989). The wikipedia article states that you can run Word before 2013 on Linux via Wine.

Microsoft pissed me off back in '97 after I bought 'Home Essentials' because I needed a word processor (with aspirations of becoming a writer). Paid $100 bucks for it (which was a ton of money for my crappy job at the time) and then a month later they released Office '97, with no upgrade path...

These days, I think I'll start doing my writing with Atari Works. :P

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Quoting: Mountain ManNow we just need to convince everyone using a Steam Deck to ditch Windows and install Linux on their desktops because they're already using Linux.

Ha, just pick a 'proper' Linux distribution. PopOS was one for me... until I attempted to update some old install on a laptop I sold to some friends for cheap. PopOS ate itself in a spectacular way! Back to Debian for you! On that note; seems every new Debian release there are less and less things I have to tweak post-install for it to work the way I want it to. And at this point it's mostly just installing ublock on Firefox and changing it's default search engine away from Google.

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Quoting: Highball

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualRight, so native applications for ChromeOS can run on Linux, because native applications for ChromeOS are written for Linux, meant to be used in containers.

Well, I guess ChromeOS is a Linux distribution then.

Yes, ChromeOS is Linux. See the documentation here.

It seems like Google has done something similar to Valve(Valve followed Google I mean) with the Steam Deck Big Picture UI. The way I understand it, they have a custom Window Manager that just opens 1 Window to draw Big Picture. And Google has made a custom Window Manager as well and it originally only loaded Chrome (from what I understand).

I haven't taken a look at ChromeOS at all, but I'm sure the Window Manager is just a Wayland compositor. The difference here is that Valve also packages a Desktop Environment and sticks with a more stock distribution. Google could have done the same but their whole marketing plan is "security" which is why you are reading about everything being containerized. You could get a similar experience with distrobox on your Linux Desktop. I have distrobox loaded on my Steam Deck with an Ubuntu container, when I'm in desktop mode, I just run everything from the Ubuntu container. You can map the applications in the container so they appear as if they were installed by the host OS, gui applications and all.

You can ignore this rant part.

Spoiler, click me

<rant>
If Google started with a stock Linux distribution from the start, the devices would get repudiated for not running Windows applications. Which is the same excuse people use for not switching to Linux now. Instead they sell low cost devices and people buy a ChromeOS device with the idea in mind that they will only do ChromeOS things on it. Which is how new comers to Linux should approach Linux. Instead we get crocodile tears about Office and Adobe and "they should make a more friendly desktop for Windows users". You don't hear people crying about ChromeOS being unfriendly and different do you?</rant>

Google has also been very careful not to allow hackers to run away with their devices. Any normal dev will just wax ChromeOS and load Ubuntu onto the device without a second of hesitation. Instead they control how you get access to the linux side of things; see Crostini. To me it looks like Google wants to sell devices at a loss so they can saturate the market and out compete on price. Mean while make their money harvesting data and delivering ads. "You're getting a device with security in mind. *wink*"

ChromeOS is Linux. Whether ChromeOS is Desktop Linux and does it have or make a compatible userland available to the user is really the question. It for sure looks like it's going that way. ChromeOS + a Steam ready container with Proton? sounds like a slam dunk for Google.

The most amusing thing to me is that when Windows 7 released, all I could think of was 'wow, they almost 1:1 copied KDE's initial look / feel. About the only big difference is the control panel and settings in KDE needs a massive clean up, and Wine to be better.' Imagine now, with Wine / Proton being so good at compatibility, releasing a cleaned up KDE themed to look like Windows 7, with all the 'ownership' that operating system had, continual updates being made available and all those grognards accepting that is their future so they don't have to go onto Win 8,10,11, where you are losing more and more of that ownership...

Conspiracy Mode; Have you ever wondered if one of the main reasons Office and it's ilk are moving to cloud based systems is due to Linux finally getting to the point where it can run stand alone Office? I'm pretty sure the latest version runs fine there now... (I still don't know why macOS got a port of Office, and Linux never did. You'd think MS would want Office on all the platforms they could to make more money... but then again, they figure they can force people to also buy Windows... greedy Mofos).

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Quoting: win8linux

Quoting: buonoGonna have to start a new website - gamingonbsd soon.... :)

Too mainstream, BSD is used on the PlayStation 4 and 5. :P

GamingOnHaiku when

Yeah, you need something like gamingonamigaos4.com.

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Quoting: Peffse

Quoting: HighballWhat kind of system were you testing out?

Oh it was entirely too old. 2005-ish gaming PC. I knew the chances were slim but I wanted to try anyway. The fact I got as far as I did is a testament to how versatile Linux desktop is nowadays.

I recently have ran into another case of 'why do people use macs? Linux lets me do what I want...' I have a 'gaming table' that I set up four 4k monitors on and was trying to drive all four + another screen for running FoundryVTT (browser based). Firefox on the macOS doesn't seem to be able to go to full screen mode (F11 on the mac does not do the same as it does on Linux / Windows), and while the mac was able to drive its own display and the 4x4k monitors, the way it's workspaces and 'fullscreen' Firefox was working was trash. It'd blank out all screens and create a new workspace for every browser I pushed F11 on, so it would not let me display them all at once.

On the flip side, I have a Yoga 9i, and while it's not powerful enough to run all the displays at 4k, I did get them to run at 1080p, and four browsers with different profiles all running at once. Performance isn't what I'd like, but it's close enough to run it all.

Simply a (very niche) use case where Linux is vastly superior.

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